Happening
One definition comes from Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort in The New Media Reader, "The term 'happening' has been used to describe many performances and events, organized by Allan Kaprow and others during the 1950s and 1960s, including a number of theatrical productions that were traditionally scripted and invited only limited audience interaction.
"[4]: 83 Another definition is "a purposefully composed form of theatre in which diverse alogical elements, including nonmatrixed performing, are organized in a compartmented structure".
"His happenings incorporated the use of huge constructions or sculptures similar to those suggested by Artaud," wrote Botting, who also compared them to the "impermanent art" of Dada.
"[10] Claes Oldenburg, best known for his innovative sculptures, used a vacant house, his own store, and the parking lot of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Los Angeles for Injun, World's Fair II and AUT OBO DYS.
[17][18] During the summer of 1959, Red Grooms along with others (Yvonne Andersen, Bill Barrell, Sylvia Small and Dominic Falcone) staged the non-narrative "play" Walking Man, which began with construction sounds, such as sawing.
[19] On the opening night of The Burning Building, Bob Thompson solicited an audience member for a light, since none of the cast had one, and this gesture of spontaneous theater recurred in eight subsequent performances.
Kaprow supports that "happenings invite us to cast aside for a moment these proper manners and partake wholly in the real nature of the art and life.
It is a rough and sudden act, where one often feels "dirty", and dirt, we might begin to realize, is also organic and fertile, and everything including the visitors can grow a little into such circumstances."
"[19] The lack of plot as well as the expected audience participation can be likened to Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed, which also claims that "spectator is a bad word".
The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking the form of a cheque, in exchange for gold; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the cheque, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine.
In a decorated room within a grand residence, a draped 'cadaver' rested on a plinth which was then ritually stabbed by an 'executioner' while a 'service' was read consisting of extracts from the French décadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans and le Marquis de Sade.
[26] Poet and painter Adrian Henri claimed to have organized the first happenings in England in Liverpool in 1962,[27] taking place during the Merseyside Arts Festival.
In the Netherlands, the first documented happening took place in 1961, with the Dutch artist and performer Wim T. Schippers emptying a bottle of soda water in the North Sea near Petten.
In the 1960s Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell, Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman, Dick Higgins, and HA Schult staged happenings in Germany.
In Canada, Gary Botting created or "constructed" happenings between 1969 (in St. John's, Newfoundland) and 1972 (in Edmonton, Alberta), including The Aeolian Stringer in which a "captive" audience was entangled in string emanating from a vacuum cleaner as it made its rounds (similar to Kaprow's "A Spring Happening", where he used a power lawnmower and huge electric fan to similar effect); Zen Rock Festival in which the central icon was a huge rock with which the audience interacted in unpredictable ways; Black on Black held in the Edmonton Art Gallery; and "Pipe Dream," set in a men's washroom with an all-female "cast".
[30] Also in the second half of the 1980s, a student-based happening movement Orange Alternative founded by Major Waldemar Fydrych became known for its much attended happenings (over 10 thousand participants at one time) aimed against the military regime led by General Jaruzelski and the fear blocking the Polish society ever since martial law had been imposed in December 1981.
On 1 May 1999, a Pillar of Shame was set up on the Zócalo[31] in Mexico City and it stood for two days in front of the Parliament to protest the oppression of the region's indigenous people.
The non-profit, artist-run organization, iKatun,[32] artist group, The Institute of Infinitely Small Things, has reflected the use of "happenings" influence while incorporating the medium of internet.
[33] For example, a user may look at a long list of slogans on the website database section, and may submit, in text, his or her take on the most literal way to act out the slogan/command.
This means of performance art draws on the collaboration of the web world and tangible reality to conduct a new, modern happening.
[37] The collective has since aimed to make poetry readings more similar to language happenings which involve a variety of interdisciplinary acts and performances occurring at the same time.
[38][39] Kaprow explains that happenings are not a new style, but a moral act, a human stand of great urgency, whose professional status as art is less critical than their certainty as an ultimate existential commitment.
"The whole situation is corrosive, neither patrons nor artists comprehend their role...and out of this hidden discomfort comes a stillborn art, tight or merely repetitive and at worst, chic."
[40][41] Along with the famous work of Allan Kaprow, Burning Man frowns on the idea of having spectators and stresses the importance of everyone being involved to create something amazing and unique.
